I wont go into great detail here but it is something I must talk about it. I don't believe my intention was to end it all, or I am sure I would have done it. I just wanted to sleep, a very long time. After being released I kept refilling my prescriptions even though I was not taking them. Then one night I took them all. I remember being in a police cruiser, the back of it, kicking and screaming. My landlord had called them. This was different, this visit to the hospital. I wasn't admitted to Pshychiatry but to ICU. I woke up to my family in the room and wondered what was going on. What scared me was I could not feel my legs. I had lost feeling from my mid section down. This led to 13 months of therapy before I could stand on my own two feet again. But that was my road to recovery. Quite frankly it scared the shit out of me.
I never went back to the Morris wing. I wanted a better life. I took the scenic route, but I got there. I learned what I could handle and what I could not. I learned my triggers and most importantly, I learned what depression was. I don't think depression ever goes away. I know that I do not handle stress like most do because of my experience with depression. My fear of living that life again is so great that now, I can't feel. My mind doesn't let me go there. If something hurts, I turn it off. No, I don't deal with things that way but I am surviving...and doing so happily so it works for me.
Then I met my husband and I quickly learned to respect my father for all that I put him through. My husband was a victim of circumstance and a shitty childhood that he could not let go. The depression he suffered not only ruined his life but our marriage. No, I will not shun my part in the marriage breakdown but ultimately it was my inability to cater to his depression that did it. One thing we must learn as a society dealing with those suffering from depression is that we cannot enable them. It's either shit, or get off the pot. My husband would do neither so I got off the pot. Or is it, I shit? Either or, I had to leave. He would not help himself, no motivation to live a better life. Because of that he held me back from my life. I had to live his disability and I could do it no longer. I'm still here for him and I still press him to get help but I don't live his life anymore. He gets suicidal, I tell him to do it. Cold? No, not at all. He is looking for attention as I was all those years. I now tell him to get help or don't come crying to me....literally.
Depression is a horrible disease. It's not like a broken bone that is guaranteed to heal in six weeks. We need to talk about it and help those who suffer from it. But we also need to force them to deal with life. Not with hospitals, not with drugs but with a motivation for a better life. It may not kill them in the literal sense but it WILL kill their spirit, and who wants to live without a spirit? It can be beat and there is so much to life after depression. But I also know it will always be a part of me. Depression was my first introduction to myself. It made me aware of who I am and I think was the start of the journey I am on today. It is a marker in my life of a place I never want to go again. It keeps things in perspective for me and I need that.
If you know of someone suffering with depression, befriend them. Be there for them, hug them and lend your ear to them. But don’t be afraid to tell them to shit or get off the pot. Sometimes it’s the push they need to get on with life. As a side note, I have no qualification to professionally give that advice. I just know that I could have been spared a lot of BS many years ago had I had someone there to give me a dose of my own medicine. But then again, I never would have learned how to do a wheelie in a wheel chair either. :P
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